Guild Wars 2

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

Vayne.8563:

Objectively you’re right. But I’m not sure how much that really helps the conversation.

There never has been a ‘conversation’ because people participating aren’t talking about the same thing. The original poster was really trying to say, “I don’t seem to like GW2 any longer.”

And he’s right…for him. No one can tell him the game hasn’t changed it’s identity because to him it has. But there is a conversation to be had, though it’s not really obvious.

The problem isn’t just that changes are made, but how changes are made to the game.

If you’ve been playing all along and you’ve done all the living stories and living story achievements the jump to HoT is actually not that bad.

But if you haven’t, and you just level to 80 don’t own LS 2 and you just jump into HoT the difficult from core to HoT is huge. It’s a total game changer.

There’s no warning to tell you not to do that. How many people do you think finish their story and then jump into hot that bought the game more recently?

That’s a big issue because people are used to games with breadcrumb trails that gradually increase difficulty.

Many of those people are going to feel like the game’s identity has changed from a more or less casual romp to a death trap.

I’m not sure what can be done about it, but something should be.

OniGiri.9461:

Vayne.8563:

@OniGirl

You’re missing my point here. The game hasn’t shifted identity to you because this is how you perceive the game’s identity. But the game doesn’t have an identity with a capitol “I”. You saw the game a certain way and it remains that way to you.

More and more people who are casual are seeing the game they saw slip away. Not just raids. Maybe not even mainly raids. I used the winter’s presence shoulder as an example. That is beyond many casual players. They see the people getting it and realize they can’t. Not in one year. Maybe not in two. They see the bat shoulders from halloween. They see timed events in HoT that are on a schedule. for which they have to use LFG to get on a map that can beat it. Those are all changes.

For you the game has changed in a way that hasn’t affected how you perceived it’s identity. For me, that’s mostly true as well.

But just as true, there are people who have stopped playing because the game’s identity has changed for them.

The bigger the shift the more people will be affected. HoT is my favorite content in the game, but I do believe the shift in focus affected a lot of people. To those people, the game has lost it’s identity even if it hasn’t from our point of view.

And there are even people who left when ascended were first introduced who thought the game had lost it’s identity even then.

The problem wasn’t just HoT. It was HoT followed by 9 months of only raids and PvP in a content drought that probably cost the game players. I don’t suspect that will happen again. I don’t think it should have happened in the first place, but hindsight is 20/20.

I’m guilty here of hyperbole, which I’ve often accused people of because I’ve seen casual people walk away from this game in my guild. It’s just getting too much for some of them. Too hard, or too much grind or too much “work”. So yeah, I went over the deep end in some of what I was saying. I don’t like seeing guildies I’ve played with for years walk away because they don’t feel they have time to play the game the way the game requires you to play it now.

They feel left behind and who am I to say they’re wrong?

Well you can’t do a lot about the way people feel. Change is necessary to keep things alive and also to keep people interested.
I started gw2 with two (irl) friend of mine and we created a guild and played as we liked. One friend was always super active, always the first to find something new and to try every game mode and more or less master it. The other friend was the other extreme. Super casual and layed back. To this day never heard about “meta”, rotations, builds or any of that stuff. Me and my more active friend got to a point where we had maxed our gear and levels and had a pretty good knowledge of the game and how to do stuff. And more important we knew where to get information on how to learn stuff thats new.
My casual friend stopped playing because it was too much “work” to keep up. And we are talking about vanilla gw2!!

The game has to keep moving forward and some will drop out but new ones will come in. And just because someone stopped doesnt mean they won’t return at some point.

Of course you can change the way people feel. More than that, to some degree you have to change the way people feel. A lot of the issues Anet has is presentation.

There are many changes they make that aren’t well explained or aren’t explained at all, and they leave people feeling angry, confused or puzzled. This isn’t the best way, in my opinion, to run the game.

If you tell people up front, HoT is meant to be challenging end game content, and that Living Story Season 2 is meant to prepare you for that, or where to go to get better before you venture into HOT, you end up with a different situation than we have now, which is people finishing the core game and jumping right into hot and getting slaughtered, because they don’t know any better.

They ramped up the difficulty too fast for people who don’t run dungeons and fractals, so they shouldn’t be surprised they’ve left some of those people behind.

Unfortunately casuals do spend lots of money in the gem store, because they’re used to doing so from facebook games. lol

Vayne.8563:

OniGiri.9461:

Vayne.8563:

@OniGirl

You’re missing my point here. The game hasn’t shifted identity to you because this is how you perceive the game’s identity. But the game doesn’t have an identity with a capitol “I”. You saw the game a certain way and it remains that way to you.

More and more people who are casual are seeing the game they saw slip away. Not just raids. Maybe not even mainly raids. I used the winter’s presence shoulder as an example. That is beyond many casual players. They see the people getting it and realize they can’t. Not in one year. Maybe not in two. They see the bat shoulders from halloween. They see timed events in HoT that are on a schedule. for which they have to use LFG to get on a map that can beat it. Those are all changes.

For you the game has changed in a way that hasn’t affected how you perceived it’s identity. For me, that’s mostly true as well.

But just as true, there are people who have stopped playing because the game’s identity has changed for them.

The bigger the shift the more people will be affected. HoT is my favorite content in the game, but I do believe the shift in focus affected a lot of people. To those people, the game has lost it’s identity even if it hasn’t from our point of view.

And there are even people who left when ascended were first introduced who thought the game had lost it’s identity even then.

The problem wasn’t just HoT. It was HoT followed by 9 months of only raids and PvP in a content drought that probably cost the game players. I don’t suspect that will happen again. I don’t think it should have happened in the first place, but hindsight is 20/20.

I’m guilty here of hyperbole, which I’ve often accused people of because I’ve seen casual people walk away from this game in my guild. It’s just getting too much for some of them. Too hard, or too much grind or too much “work”. So yeah, I went over the deep end in some of what I was saying. I don’t like seeing guildies I’ve played with for years walk away because they don’t feel they have time to play the game the way the game requires you to play it now.

They feel left behind and who am I to say they’re wrong?

Well you can’t do a lot about the way people feel. Change is necessary to keep things alive and also to keep people interested.
I started gw2 with two (irl) friend of mine and we created a guild and played as we liked. One friend was always super active, always the first to find something new and to try every game mode and more or less master it. The other friend was the other extreme. Super casual and layed back. To this day never heard about “meta”, rotations, builds or any of that stuff. Me and my more active friend got to a point where we had maxed our gear and levels and had a pretty good knowledge of the game and how to do stuff. And more important we knew where to get information on how to learn stuff thats new.
My casual friend stopped playing because it was too much “work” to keep up. And we are talking about vanilla gw2!!

The game has to keep moving forward and some will drop out but new ones will come in. And just because someone stopped doesnt mean they won’t return at some point.

Of course you can change the way people feel. More than that, to some degree you have to change the way people feel. A lot of the issues Anet has is presentation.

There are many changes they make that aren’t well explained or aren’t explained at all, and they leave people feeling angry, confused or puzzled. This isn’t the best way, in my opinion, to run the game.

If you tell people up front, HoT is meant to be challenging end game content, and that Living Story Season 2 is meant to prepare you for that, or where to go to get better before you venture into HOT, you end up with a different situation than we have now, which is people finishing the core game and jumping right into hot and getting slaughtered, because they don’t know any better.

They ramped up the difficulty too fast for people who don’t run dungeons and fractals, so they shouldn’t be surprised they’ve left some of those people behind.

Unfortunately casuals do spend lots of money in the gem store, because they’re used to doing so from facebook games. lol

I personally do not feel that the game has lost its identity, but much of what Vayne says here rings true to me.

Ashen.2907:

Vayne.8563:

OniGiri.9461:

Vayne.8563:

@OniGirl

You’re missing my point here. The game hasn’t shifted identity to you because this is how you perceive the game’s identity. But the game doesn’t have an identity with a capitol “I”. You saw the game a certain way and it remains that way to you.

More and more people who are casual are seeing the game they saw slip away. Not just raids. Maybe not even mainly raids. I used the winter’s presence shoulder as an example. That is beyond many casual players. They see the people getting it and realize they can’t. Not in one year. Maybe not in two. They see the bat shoulders from halloween. They see timed events in HoT that are on a schedule. for which they have to use LFG to get on a map that can beat it. Those are all changes.

For you the game has changed in a way that hasn’t affected how you perceived it’s identity. For me, that’s mostly true as well.

But just as true, there are people who have stopped playing because the game’s identity has changed for them.

The bigger the shift the more people will be affected. HoT is my favorite content in the game, but I do believe the shift in focus affected a lot of people. To those people, the game has lost it’s identity even if it hasn’t from our point of view.

And there are even people who left when ascended were first introduced who thought the game had lost it’s identity even then.

The problem wasn’t just HoT. It was HoT followed by 9 months of only raids and PvP in a content drought that probably cost the game players. I don’t suspect that will happen again. I don’t think it should have happened in the first place, but hindsight is 20/20.

I’m guilty here of hyperbole, which I’ve often accused people of because I’ve seen casual people walk away from this game in my guild. It’s just getting too much for some of them. Too hard, or too much grind or too much “work”. So yeah, I went over the deep end in some of what I was saying. I don’t like seeing guildies I’ve played with for years walk away because they don’t feel they have time to play the game the way the game requires you to play it now.

They feel left behind and who am I to say they’re wrong?

Well you can’t do a lot about the way people feel. Change is necessary to keep things alive and also to keep people interested.
I started gw2 with two (irl) friend of mine and we created a guild and played as we liked. One friend was always super active, always the first to find something new and to try every game mode and more or less master it. The other friend was the other extreme. Super casual and layed back. To this day never heard about “meta”, rotations, builds or any of that stuff. Me and my more active friend got to a point where we had maxed our gear and levels and had a pretty good knowledge of the game and how to do stuff. And more important we knew where to get information on how to learn stuff thats new.
My casual friend stopped playing because it was too much “work” to keep up. And we are talking about vanilla gw2!!

The game has to keep moving forward and some will drop out but new ones will come in. And just because someone stopped doesnt mean they won’t return at some point.

Of course you can change the way people feel. More than that, to some degree you have to change the way people feel. A lot of the issues Anet has is presentation.

There are many changes they make that aren’t well explained or aren’t explained at all, and they leave people feeling angry, confused or puzzled. This isn’t the best way, in my opinion, to run the game.

If you tell people up front, HoT is meant to be challenging end game content, and that Living Story Season 2 is meant to prepare you for that, or where to go to get better before you venture into HOT, you end up with a different situation than we have now, which is people finishing the core game and jumping right into hot and getting slaughtered, because they don’t know any better.

They ramped up the difficulty too fast for people who don’t run dungeons and fractals, so they shouldn’t be surprised they’ve left some of those people behind.

Unfortunately casuals do spend lots of money in the gem store, because they’re used to doing so from facebook games. lol

I personally do not feel that the game has lost its identity, but much of what Vayne says here rings true to me.

I agree with Vayne about the scaling of difficulty from core to HoT also. Casual players go lalala autoattackafk through core and then get a hit with a plank to the face when they get to HoT. The game fails to teach how to use skills on core maps and then hits them with a hard area without adequate preparation. No wonder so many hate those maps, complain about difficulty and feel the game has changed to exclude them.

Ashen.2907:

Vayne.8563:

OniGiri.9461:

Vayne.8563:

@OniGirl

You’re missing my point here. The game hasn’t shifted identity to you because this is how you perceive the game’s identity. But the game doesn’t have an identity with a capitol “I”. You saw the game a certain way and it remains that way to you.

More and more people who are casual are seeing the game they saw slip away. Not just raids. Maybe not even mainly raids. I used the winter’s presence shoulder as an example. That is beyond many casual players. They see the people getting it and realize they can’t. Not in one year. Maybe not in two. They see the bat shoulders from halloween. They see timed events in HoT that are on a schedule. for which they have to use LFG to get on a map that can beat it. Those are all changes.

For you the game has changed in a way that hasn’t affected how you perceived it’s identity. For me, that’s mostly true as well.

But just as true, there are people who have stopped playing because the game’s identity has changed for them.

The bigger the shift the more people will be affected. HoT is my favorite content in the game, but I do believe the shift in focus affected a lot of people. To those people, the game has lost it’s identity even if it hasn’t from our point of view.

And there are even people who left when ascended were first introduced who thought the game had lost it’s identity even then.

The problem wasn’t just HoT. It was HoT followed by 9 months of only raids and PvP in a content drought that probably cost the game players. I don’t suspect that will happen again. I don’t think it should have happened in the first place, but hindsight is 20/20.

I’m guilty here of hyperbole, which I’ve often accused people of because I’ve seen casual people walk away from this game in my guild. It’s just getting too much for some of them. Too hard, or too much grind or too much “work”. So yeah, I went over the deep end in some of what I was saying. I don’t like seeing guildies I’ve played with for years walk away because they don’t feel they have time to play the game the way the game requires you to play it now.

They feel left behind and who am I to say they’re wrong?

Well you can’t do a lot about the way people feel. Change is necessary to keep things alive and also to keep people interested.
I started gw2 with two (irl) friend of mine and we created a guild and played as we liked. One friend was always super active, always the first to find something new and to try every game mode and more or less master it. The other friend was the other extreme. Super casual and layed back. To this day never heard about “meta”, rotations, builds or any of that stuff. Me and my more active friend got to a point where we had maxed our gear and levels and had a pretty good knowledge of the game and how to do stuff. And more important we knew where to get information on how to learn stuff thats new.
My casual friend stopped playing because it was too much “work” to keep up. And we are talking about vanilla gw2!!

The game has to keep moving forward and some will drop out but new ones will come in. And just because someone stopped doesnt mean they won’t return at some point.

Of course you can change the way people feel. More than that, to some degree you have to change the way people feel. A lot of the issues Anet has is presentation.

There are many changes they make that aren’t well explained or aren’t explained at all, and they leave people feeling angry, confused or puzzled. This isn’t the best way, in my opinion, to run the game.

If you tell people up front, HoT is meant to be challenging end game content, and that Living Story Season 2 is meant to prepare you for that, or where to go to get better before you venture into HOT, you end up with a different situation than we have now, which is people finishing the core game and jumping right into hot and getting slaughtered, because they don’t know any better.

They ramped up the difficulty too fast for people who don’t run dungeons and fractals, so they shouldn’t be surprised they’ve left some of those people behind.

Unfortunately casuals do spend lots of money in the gem store, because they’re used to doing so from facebook games. lol

I personally do not feel that the game has lost its identity, but much of what Vayne says here rings true to me.

To be clear I don’t feel the game has lost it’s identity either…but I can see why people are saying they feel it does.

Behellagh.1468:

Ayrilana.1396:

The living story inched ahead and even more so when you account for everything released since HoT. I wouldn’t focus too much on rewards since counting them doesn’t mean all that much as we don’t know how much time went into them.

The bulk of the unique rewards for raids are the weapon skins. I guess you could ask how many resources are spent on weapon skins but then we typically don’t get them in PvE anyway but though the BLTC chests. I haven’t seen any new BLTC weapon skins for some time so perhaps one could argue the raid weapon skins were developed by whoever did those skins. That would mean that PvE in the rest of the game didn’t really lose anything. there are some difference but I don’t know if they’re substantial enough to matter.

Just since the start of Season 3.

July 26, 2016 – https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Embellished_weapon_skins
August 23, 2016 – https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Bloodstone_weapon_skins
October 18, 2016 – https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Gargoyle_weapon_skins
December 13, 2016 – https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Frostforged_weapon_skins
February 8, 2016 – https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Devoted_weapon_skins

Average gap, about 7 weeks. Since the last one, 37 days.

Your definition of “in some time” is much shorter than mine.

I missed the devoted ones which is why I said for some time.

Scipio.3204:

Ayrilana.1396:

Scipio.3204:

Ayrilana.1396:

Scipio.3204:

Ayrilana.1396:

Whether or not “released” was included, you’re still comparing rewards.

Well, Duh. Maybe because to extract any conclusion regarding the resources we have to look at the products, and since we don’t know the distribution of the reward team amongst game modes, the only thing we can look at is the actual released rewards.

Ayrilana.1396:

Raids are a new game mode so you’re going to see a greater influx of those. It’d be like if you were complaining that fractals at release were getting more rewards than the rest of the game.

There is a huge difference here because of several reasons. One being is fractals are made to be accessible, and two, fractals don’t expand like raids do. One new fractal doesn’t need its own set of rewards to be appealing , unlike in the case of raids.

Ayrilana.1396:

Besides, LS is getting released at a much greater rate so those rewards will soon surpass what was included as raid awards if they haven’t already.

I don’t recall the elite maps from GW1 getting an easy mode such as Underworld. They were meant to be challenging.

Could be a point ,if there weren’t single bosses having more rewards than entire episodes.
On the GW1 argument, I believe Vayne already adressed that a little way back.

Behellagh.1468:

No, the majority of rewards YOU want are behind the raids. And specific gameplay modes should have exclusive rewards. There are rewards I would love but they are behind gameplay modes I’m not willing to invest the time in. Raids are no different.

Context. Perhaps I was misunderstable , I was refering to rewards being released after HoT. Personally I have everything I want from raids including the armor

Then why go and say you weren’t comparing rewards?

Raids are accessible too. Fractals are not on the same level as raids and you can view the rewards as for the entire raid that is unlocked by completing each wing. There isn’t a difference in regards to what I was talking about as what you’re seeing is an influx of rewards to catch up with what other areas of the game provide.

Have you actually counted the rewards that each episode have provided against what each wing has provided?

Because the emphasis isn’t on what has been released, rather on what is currently being worked on and what will be worked on. Or should I say how much resources raids need to take to make them as compelling as they currently are. And as we know, content interest should be increased not kept on the same level.

It wouldn’t be such an issue that raids get this many, but the fact it is exclusive by it’s nature. Every content has exclusive rewards, but they also have a lot of non-exclusive. I’m pretty sure raids took the lead in terms of exclusives in the short period of time they are in-game.

Also yes, I did most , but feel free to do the same. For example Out of Shadows bought us a new Backpack skin and a Helm, which is multi-mode available. The latest one 2 armor piece, 1 back and 2 (?) weapon. Matthias alone has 9 exclusive weapon skin.

The living story inched ahead and even more so when you account for everything released since HoT. I wouldn’t focus too much on rewards since counting them doesn’t mean all that much as we don’t know how much time went into them.

The bulk of the unique rewards for raids are the weapon skins. I guess you could ask how many resources are spent on weapon skins but then we typically don’t get them in PvE anyway but though the BLTC chests. I haven’t seen any new BLTC weapon skins for some time so perhaps one could argue the raid weapon skins were developed by whoever did those skins. That would mean that PvE in the rest of the game didn’t really lose anything. there are some difference but I don’t know if they’re substantial enough to matter.

It has been said several times already: The gemstore team works independently from the others. As far as I can tell, the ticket weapons are coming at a steady state, alongside with the outfits. Also one could argue it would be even worse if the raid took resources from them.

Also, no. LS3 didn’t have as many reward as the raids did.

It did have at least as many rewards.

Chun.5827:

Its interesting how you claim that the only people who should be able to raid are those that have enough “dedication”. And people, who refuse to put in the effort shouldn’t raid. How about people who like challenges, but hate having to socialize and rely on 9 other people. Read my comments on page 3 and 4 of this topic.

You do realize that this is an MMO and raids are group content, right? If you can’t socialize enough to work as a group then the content just isn’t for you. It takes dedication to learn the raid mechanics (the #1 reason people fail). The raid was desigtned to be challenging. If it’s too challenging for you, and you don’t want to do what it takes to overcome that challenge like everyone else, the raid just isn’t for you. It’s unfortunate, and I wish you’d give it another try, but nerfing it down to your level isn’t the answer.

Chun.5827:

Shouldn’t “challenging” content be based only on pure skill and dedication? Raids should be relabeled “Socially Challenging Content” instead, because the true challenge comes from having to deal with people. I am not Human Resources, I want to play the game, not deal with conflicting interests and drama. Yes, there is a major issue with raid accessibility.

Raids are based on skill (following the mechanics and performing well with your class) as well as dedication (learning the mechanics and learning your class) all within a group setting. Over 90% of the game can be done solo. Are you complaining about not being able to solo dungeons and fractals too? This is an MMO so some social interaction is expected and especially so for content designed specially for groups. The only issue with raid accessibility in this case is with someone that doesn’t want to interact with others. This limitation is not the game’s fault.

Chun.5827:

I like how you mentioned GW1, I beaten all elite zones without other players. Some examples being Underworld, Fissure of Woe, Slavers Exile, Domain of Anguish, The Deep, Urgoz, Winds of Change(HM), War in Kryta (HM), all missions and explorable areas(HM). In GW2, I’ve done all PvE areas, events, dungeons, and fractals without needing to socialize or communicate with anyone. The only exception to PvE content released by Anet is…. raids.

When I stated GW1, I’m referring to when it was still active and new. You know, when you did not have heroes. This was around the time where all of us were learning how to do the elite maps with a lot of people saying they were too difficult.

Chun.5827:

Fractals and dungeons are easy to learn simply by copying the group, no social drama needed when learning. I’ve PUGed thousands of dungeons and fractals. Here is how the runs go, everyone silently plays, at the end everyone says “ty”. To even learn raids, guess what? you have to deal with drama from other people. I can’t learn on my own pace, with my own schedule, and at my own terms. All Gw1 and Gw2 PvE content except raids is easily accessible.

And raids are meant to be a step above that for those that wanted more of a challenge. So they’re not for you. Not everything in a game will appeal to everyone.

Chun.5827:

The “challenge” in challenging content should be because the content itself is actually difficult, not the difficulty of trying to play with 9 other people. I highly suggest you play Dark Souls 3/Bloodborne, No Leveling run, All bosses. Your understand what actual mechanically “challenging content” is. What GW2 needs is challenging content, where the mechanics are challenging, not because its a social challenge.

The content itself is difficult and part of the challenge is learning to function together. What you seem to keep forgetting is that this is a MMO which involves interactions with others and raids are GROUP content.

To Ayrilana.1396,

Its interesting how you equate a “challenge” with group content. You obviously never played any difficult single player games. The “#1 reason people fail” doesn’t apply to people like me. If the raids were designed around challenging a single player, I would have no problems sinking in weeks worth of effort overcoming the challenge. Unlike in group content, in a single player challenge you would have to fill every role by yourself, and understand every facet of your profession. The meta builds wouldn’t be specialist class roles, they would be self-sufficient builds designed to deal with many scenarios. Self-sufficient build take more skill to use, require greater profession knowledge. You need to cover your own cc, cleanse your own conditions, stack your own might, etc. The builds would more closely resemble roamer or duelist builds (which definitely take more skill to use than your rotation memorizing PvE builds).

Its always been the “spirit” of GW1 & GW2, to allow the player to play at their own terms. You can go away for a year, and all the content is easily accessible and easily PUG able without communication. Unlike other MMO’s, Guildwars 1 and 2 is very friendly to solo players, “Group Content” up until now, you never needed to actually deal with other people. The only content that isn’t easily accessible is raids. I’ve soloed dungeons and fractals. Its doable but annoying considering that the bosses have health bars designed around 5 players. Raids, have health bars designed around 10 people. Unless I want to spend hours plinking away, its not an option and not fun.

This quote cannot be more wrong “And raids are meant to be a step above that for those that wanted more of a challenge. So they’re not for you. Not everything in a game will appeal to everyone.” I want challenge, for the pure sake of challenge. Easily accessible content where I rely only on my own skills and abilities. Not a challenge for the Human Resources Department.

“Group Content” != challenging content. Play Dark Souls 3/Bloodborne No Leveling, All bosses. Come back after 1000hrs of dying and tell me about your “easy” time. No one to rely on but yourself, every mistake is your own, you control all variables that lead to your success or failure. All PvE content in GW1 and GW2 can be done solo or easily done in loosely organized groups, except raids. This greatly affects the accessibility of raids, there are people like myself who want challenging content but can’t because its locked behind 9 other people. I want purely technical challenges, where I can play at my own pace. That focuses exclusively on personal skill and ability.

Chun.5827:

To Ayrilana.1396,

Its interesting how you equate a “challenge” with group content. You obviously never played any difficult single player games. The “#1 reason people fail” doesn’t apply to people like me. If the raids were designed around challenging a single player, I would have no problems sinking in weeks worth of effort overcoming the challenge. Unlike in group content, in a single player challenge you would have to fill every role by yourself, and understand every facet of your profession. The meta builds wouldn’t be specialist class roles, they would be self-sufficient builds designed to deal with many scenarios. Self-sufficient build take more skill to use, require greater profession knowledge. You need to cover your own cc, cleanse your own conditions, stack your own might, etc. The builds would more closely resemble roamer or duelist builds (which definitely take more skill to use than your rotation memorizing PvE builds).

Challenge and group content can be separate. However, raids are challenging group content. They’re meant to be challenging and done in a group. Something that I have tried repeatedly to stress.

Here’s some reading for you.

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/designing-challenging-content/
https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/raids-in-guild-wars-2/

Chun.5827:

Its always been the “spirit” of GW1 & GW2, to allow the player to play at their own terms. You can go away for a year, and all the content is easily accessible and easily PUG able without communication. Unlike other MMO’s, Guildwars 1 and 2 is very friendly to solo players, “Group Content” up until now, you never needed to actually deal with other people. The only content that isn’t easily accessible is raids. I’ve soloed dungeons and fractals. Its doable but annoying considering that the bosses have health bars designed around 5 players. Raids, have health bars designed around 10 people. Unless I want to spend hours plinking away, its not an option and not fun.

Always? Dungeons and fractals were not designed to be done solo. Good job that you can but you’re in the minority of players. Anyway, over 90% of GW2 is solo friendly. Not everything has to cater to those that want to treat this like a console game. There will always be some elements of games that not everyone likes. Obviously raids is going to be one of them. It’s unfortunate but you’re insistent that there’s an issue because you cannot solo raids.

Chun.5827:

This quote cannot be more wrong “And raids are meant to be a step above that for those that wanted more of a challenge. So they’re not for you. Not everything in a game will appeal to everyone.” I want challenge, for the pure sake of challenge. Easily accessible content where I rely only on my own skills and abilities. Not a challenge for the Human Resources Department.

Then request that Anet creates challenging solo content for people like you just like how they created challenging group content for people who wanted it.

Chun.5827:

“Group Content” != challenging content. Play Dark Souls 3/Bloodborne No Leveling, All bosses. Come back after 1000hrs of dying and tell me about your “easy” time. No one to rely on but yourself, every mistake is your own, you control all variables that lead to your success or failure. All PvE content in GW1 and GW2 can be done solo or easily done in loosely organized groups, except raids. This greatly affects the accessibility of raids, there are people like myself who want challenging content but can’t because its locked behind 9 other people. I want purely technical challenges, where I can play at my own pace. That focuses exclusively on personal skill and ability.

Again… Read the links that I provided above. The raids were created specifically to be challenging and to be group content. Whatever you managed to accomplish in this game or another solo doesn’t matter.

Vayne.8563:

Ashen.2907:

Vayne.8563:

OniGiri.9461:

Vayne.8563:

@OniGirl

You’re missing my point here. The game hasn’t shifted identity to you because this is how you perceive the game’s identity. But the game doesn’t have an identity with a capitol “I”. You saw the game a certain way and it remains that way to you.

More and more people who are casual are seeing the game they saw slip away. Not just raids. Maybe not even mainly raids. I used the winter’s presence shoulder as an example. That is beyond many casual players. They see the people getting it and realize they can’t. Not in one year. Maybe not in two. They see the bat shoulders from halloween. They see timed events in HoT that are on a schedule. for which they have to use LFG to get on a map that can beat it. Those are all changes.

For you the game has changed in a way that hasn’t affected how you perceived it’s identity. For me, that’s mostly true as well.

But just as true, there are people who have stopped playing because the game’s identity has changed for them.

The bigger the shift the more people will be affected. HoT is my favorite content in the game, but I do believe the shift in focus affected a lot of people. To those people, the game has lost it’s identity even if it hasn’t from our point of view.

And there are even people who left when ascended were first introduced who thought the game had lost it’s identity even then.

The problem wasn’t just HoT. It was HoT followed by 9 months of only raids and PvP in a content drought that probably cost the game players. I don’t suspect that will happen again. I don’t think it should have happened in the first place, but hindsight is 20/20.

I’m guilty here of hyperbole, which I’ve often accused people of because I’ve seen casual people walk away from this game in my guild. It’s just getting too much for some of them. Too hard, or too much grind or too much “work”. So yeah, I went over the deep end in some of what I was saying. I don’t like seeing guildies I’ve played with for years walk away because they don’t feel they have time to play the game the way the game requires you to play it now.

They feel left behind and who am I to say they’re wrong?

Well you can’t do a lot about the way people feel. Change is necessary to keep things alive and also to keep people interested.
I started gw2 with two (irl) friend of mine and we created a guild and played as we liked. One friend was always super active, always the first to find something new and to try every game mode and more or less master it. The other friend was the other extreme. Super casual and layed back. To this day never heard about “meta”, rotations, builds or any of that stuff. Me and my more active friend got to a point where we had maxed our gear and levels and had a pretty good knowledge of the game and how to do stuff. And more important we knew where to get information on how to learn stuff thats new.
My casual friend stopped playing because it was too much “work” to keep up. And we are talking about vanilla gw2!!

The game has to keep moving forward and some will drop out but new ones will come in. And just because someone stopped doesnt mean they won’t return at some point.

Of course you can change the way people feel. More than that, to some degree you have to change the way people feel. A lot of the issues Anet has is presentation.

There are many changes they make that aren’t well explained or aren’t explained at all, and they leave people feeling angry, confused or puzzled. This isn’t the best way, in my opinion, to run the game.

If you tell people up front, HoT is meant to be challenging end game content, and that Living Story Season 2 is meant to prepare you for that, or where to go to get better before you venture into HOT, you end up with a different situation than we have now, which is people finishing the core game and jumping right into hot and getting slaughtered, because they don’t know any better.

They ramped up the difficulty too fast for people who don’t run dungeons and fractals, so they shouldn’t be surprised they’ve left some of those people behind.

Unfortunately casuals do spend lots of money in the gem store, because they’re used to doing so from facebook games. lol

I personally do not feel that the game has lost its identity, but much of what Vayne says here rings true to me.

To be clear I don’t feel the game has lost it’s identity either…but I can see why people are saying they feel it does.

Understood.

I really liked your differentiation between, “identity,” and, “Identity.”

I wouldn’t say the profession balances to PvE were “because of Raids”, simply as much as “Because of High-End PvE instanced content”, and that’s because balance is always done with the top tier of performance in mind (Even when it’s changing things to make mid- and low-skill play more enjoyable, they’re making sure things remain as balanced as possible at the high-end as well).

Before we had raids, the classes were rebalanced based on their High-End Fractal performance. Before Fractals were introduced, Dungeon Performance was used to benchmark class performance.

Chun.5827:

Its interesting how you equate a “challenge” with group content.

Considering the genre of the game we’re talking about (A Massive-Multiplayer Online RPG), I sure hope that the difficult content is group content. Otherwise, someone screwed up somewhere very early in the design process.

The whole point of these games is to play in a more social manner. Because let’s be frank (or bob, if you prefer), if not for the social aspect I could play a few dozen much better games. :P

Ayrilana.1396:

It did have at least as many rewards.

Sigh…. raids so far released the white mantle weapon set (16 piece) and the experimental envoy armor set (18 unique piece). Outside of these every boss has an average 2 unique item associated with it excluding trio and escort ( 2*11= 22 piece). That is 56 altogether +/- one or two.

LS episode one like I said released two unique piece. Rising flames gave us three, with an additional shoulder. The third one has 2 ,and like I said the last one has around 5. That is 12 altogether.

Even if we add the Clown weapon set , which has nothing to do with the new content outside of location, that is 28.

Calculating with this, the 4 raid wing has around twice as much reward compared to the 4 episodes released so far.

Scipio.3204:

Ayrilana.1396:

It did have at least as many rewards.

Sigh…. raids so far released the white mantle weapon set (16 piece) and the experimental envoy armor set (18 unique piece). Outside of these every boss has an average 2 unique item associated with it excluding trio and escort ( 2*11= 22 piece). That is 56 altogether +/- one or two.

LS episode one like I said released two unique piece. Rising flames gave us three, with an additional shoulder. The third one has 2 ,and like I said the last one has around 5. That is 12 altogether.

Even if we add the Clown weapon set , which has nothing to do with the new content outside of location, that is 28.

Calculating with this, the 4 raid wing has around twice as much reward compared to the 4 episodes released so far.

And you’re ignoring everything that the heart vendors sell. You’re ignoring the items you get from completing certain achievements. There’s the rewards from the recent current event. There’s also the backpacks, aquatic breathers, and home instance nodes.

Ayrilana.1396:

Scipio.3204:

Ayrilana.1396:

It did have at least as many rewards.

Sigh…. raids so far released the white mantle weapon set (16 piece) and the experimental envoy armor set (18 unique piece). Outside of these every boss has an average 2 unique item associated with it excluding trio and escort ( 2*11= 22 piece). That is 56 altogether +/- one or two.

LS episode one like I said released two unique piece. Rising flames gave us three, with an additional shoulder. The third one has 2 ,and like I said the last one has around 5. That is 12 altogether.

Even if we add the Clown weapon set , which has nothing to do with the new content outside of location, that is 28.

Calculating with this, the 4 raid wing has around twice as much reward compared to the 4 episodes released so far.

And you’re ignoring everything that the heart vendors sell. You’re ignoring the items you get from completing certain achievements. There’s the rewards from the recent current event. There’s also the backpacks, aquatic breathers, and home instance nodes.

I did not actually. Only two new heart vendors sell any kind of new equipment. I factored the few achievements that gives rewards like the Meta achievements. I did forget the new current event, fair enough, but as far as I can remember CE only gave us one headpiece and 7 new weapons, doesn’t really change the outcome.

I did not count in home instance nodes, accessories, tonics, miniatures and other similar items like the Portal Stone or infusions. The only thing that I did count are the ones Anet is known having problems in producing. E.g. things you actually wear. That includes Weapons, Armors and the back slot.

If you think I’m wrong you’re free to do your own list.

Scipio.3204:

Ayrilana.1396:

Scipio.3204:

Ayrilana.1396:

It did have at least as many rewards.

Sigh…. raids so far released the white mantle weapon set (16 piece) and the experimental envoy armor set (18 unique piece). Outside of these every boss has an average 2 unique item associated with it excluding trio and escort ( 2*11= 22 piece). That is 56 altogether +/- one or two.

LS episode one like I said released two unique piece. Rising flames gave us three, with an additional shoulder. The third one has 2 ,and like I said the last one has around 5. That is 12 altogether.

Even if we add the Clown weapon set , which has nothing to do with the new content outside of location, that is 28.

Calculating with this, the 4 raid wing has around twice as much reward compared to the 4 episodes released so far.

And you’re ignoring everything that the heart vendors sell. You’re ignoring the items you get from completing certain achievements. There’s the rewards from the recent current event. There’s also the backpacks, aquatic breathers, and home instance nodes.

I did not actually. Only two new heart vendors sell any kind of new equipment. I factored the few achievements that gives rewards like the Meta achievements. I did forget the new current event, fair enough, but as far as I can remember CE only gave us one headpiece and 7 new weapons, doesn’t really change the outcome.

I did not count in home instance nodes, accessories, tonics, miniatures and other similar items like the Portal Stone or infusions. The only thing that I did count are the ones Anet is known having problems in producing. E.g. things you actually wear. That includes Weapons, Armors and the back slot.

If you think I’m wrong you’re free to do your own list.

Rewards are not just weapon/armor skins. I’m not going to spend an hour making a list because it doesn’t matter one way or another.

Carighan.6758:

Chun.5827:

Its interesting how you equate a “challenge” with group content.

Considering the genre of the game we’re talking about (A Massive-Multiplayer Online RPG), I sure hope that the difficult content is group content. Otherwise, someone screwed up somewhere very early in the design process.

The whole point of these games is to play in a more social manner. Because let’s be frank (or bob, if you prefer), if not for the social aspect I could play a few dozen much better games. :P

Multiplayer doesn’t hold up as an excuse for challenging content because a precedent was set prior. What is group content pre hot and what in core tyria prepares a player for the things in HoT?

People have everyone right too dispute the multiplayer aspect because for more than half the content in this entire game and the content prior it was irrevelant. Group content prior was zerg, zerker, and stack. To say people shouldn’t complain due to a multiplayer aspect is to anser TC questions about whether the game lost its identity. So from your perspective if you think the content being group based is a nonissue then yes the game has lost its identity because the ground work built by the core game doesn’t match the group based content we see today.

Heck all the advertisements that sold people on the game were based around mobs and events scaling to the number of players involved. From a single player to a hundred players the content would scale to you. This isn’t true at all in todays game its doesn’t scale to the individual and doesn’t seem to adjust to the upper tiers either more people just means things will die faster instead of ramping higher.

Carighan.6758:

Chun.5827:

Its interesting how you equate a “challenge” with group content.

Considering the genre of the game we’re talking about (A Massive-Multiplayer Online RPG), I sure hope that the difficult content is group content. Otherwise, someone screwed up somewhere very early in the design process.

The whole point of these games is to play in a more social manner. Because let’s be frank (or bob, if you prefer), if not for the social aspect I could play a few dozen much better games. :P

Let me ask you this? Where does the root of Raid toxicity and conflict come from? It comes from the social aspect.

Some examples:
1. Spying and laying judgement on other group members, through the use of DPS meters
2. LFG requirements that have this formatt: LF X or kick. where X = LI, certain builds, etc.
3. Singling out a victim in a group to publicly humiliate and verbally abuse
4. Raiders vs Everyone else mentality. Segregation mentality, plenty of examples of this in human history.

Now what if raiding was solo challenging content?
1. Focuses exclusively on the “challenge” aspect
2. You can’t get carried or carry others. There wouldn’t be any raid buyers or doubts about the expertise of fellow party members.
3. No toxicity, there is no one to blame for any failures except yourself
4. Taking ownership and responsibility for your own learning and progression. No one dictates your schedule or how much effort you put in. Whether you want to use DPS meters or not. Everything is on you.
Take a look on Dark Souls 3 reddit or Bloodborne reddit. There’s a reason why toxicity is near non-existent.

GW2 social content in the past has always been low requirement and loosely organized to promote cooperation and happiness across as many people as possible. Raids changed this, and in terms of challenge, enforcing discipline and requirements is a social challenge not a technical one. A abrupt contrast from the rest of the PvE content in the game, the “spirit” of the game has changed.

Why should the truly challenging content be group enforced? The moment it becomes group enforced the social aspect acts as a barrier to people who only want the challenge aspect. Change truly challenging content to solo, and you remove all the toxicity around raids. The only people who could complain, are people who want the rewards but can’t beat the content.

Doam.8305:

What is group content pre hot and what in core tyria prepares a player for the things in HoT?

I agree that this is a problem, but I see the fault entirely on the pre-HoT side.

HoT feels much more balanced. Still easy, but you cannot go brain-AFK. Things will kill you if you do, unless you are grouped (then it’s entirely trivial again). Which is a nice balance for a social MMO. Group up and it’s all safe haven, go solo but then pay attention.

But ofc, yes, it’s a harsh lesson from pre-HoT, but that’s because honestly, the old world is pretty… boring? As far as PvE goes? It’s all very very bland.

Chun.5827:

Carighan.6758:

Chun.5827:

Its interesting how you equate a “challenge” with group content.

Considering the genre of the game we’re talking about (A Massive-Multiplayer Online RPG), I sure hope that the difficult content is group content. Otherwise, someone screwed up somewhere very early in the design process.

The whole point of these games is to play in a more social manner. Because let’s be frank (or bob, if you prefer), if not for the social aspect I could play a few dozen much better games. :P

Let me ask you this? Where does the root of Raid toxicity and conflict come from? It comes from the social aspect.

Some examples:
1. Spying and laying judgement on other group members, through the use of DPS meters
2. LFG requirements that have this formatt: LF X or kick. where X = LI, certain builds, etc.
3. Singling out a victim in a group to publicly humiliate and verbally abuse
4. Raiders vs Everyone else mentality. Segregation mentality, plenty of examples of this in human history.

Now what if raiding was solo challenging content?
1. Focuses exclusively on the “challenge” aspect
2. You can’t get carried or carry others. There wouldn’t be any raid buyers or doubts about the expertise of fellow party members.
3. No toxicity, there is no one to blame for any failures except yourself
4. Taking ownership and responsibility for your own learning and progression. No one dictates your schedule or how much effort you put in. Whether you want to use DPS meters or not. Everything is on you.
Take a look on Dark Souls 3 reddit or Bloodborne reddit. There’s a reason why toxicity is near non-existent.

GW2 social content in the past has always been low requirement and loosely organized to promote cooperation and happiness across as many people as possible. Raids changed this, and in terms of challenge, enforcing discipline and requirements is a social challenge not a technical one. A abrupt contrast from the rest of the PvE content in the game, the “spirit” of the game has changed.

Why should the truly challenging content be group enforced? The moment it becomes group enforced the social aspect acts as a barrier to people who only want the challenge aspect. Change truly challenging content to solo, and you remove all the toxicity around raids. The only people who could complain, are people who want the rewards but can’t beat the content.

Per your #3 solo content…

Are you aware that people have been toxic, cast blame, and complained about solo content since this game launched?

Almost all of the game is soloable. One small fraction is designed for people who want a cooperative, challenging, group experience…if you do not like that sort of experience, ignore this content.

Carighan.6758:

Doam.8305:

What is group content pre hot and what in core tyria prepares a player for the things in HoT?

I agree that this is a problem, but I see the fault entirely on the pre-HoT side.

HoT feels much more balanced. Still easy, but you cannot go brain-AFK. Things will kill you if you do, unless you are grouped (then it’s entirely trivial again). Which is a nice balance for a social MMO. Group up and it’s all safe haven, go solo but then pay attention.

But ofc, yes, it’s a harsh lesson from pre-HoT, but that’s because honestly, the old world is pretty… boring? As far as PvE goes? It’s all very very bland.

Agreed but to be fair you couldn’t go brain-afk pre HoT at least in regards to season 1 content anyway. They did have a build or ramp up in difficulty and in group play that would’ve eased people into HoT more so than anything shown. The issue is it was all temporary from Aetherblades, Toxic Tower, Marionette, and the assault on LA version of LA you saw large scale open world maps that easily could bridge the gap into HoT. I left out season 1 because it’s no longer in the game but I person would have a much easier time soloing HoT maps then lets say trying to solo climb the toxic tower even if you removed all the toxic bosses.

Doam.8305:

Carighan.6758:

Doam.8305:

What is group content pre hot and what in core tyria prepares a player for the things in HoT?

I agree that this is a problem, but I see the fault entirely on the pre-HoT side.

HoT feels much more balanced. Still easy, but you cannot go brain-AFK. Things will kill you if you do, unless you are grouped (then it’s entirely trivial again). Which is a nice balance for a social MMO. Group up and it’s all safe haven, go solo but then pay attention.

But ofc, yes, it’s a harsh lesson from pre-HoT, but that’s because honestly, the old world is pretty… boring? As far as PvE goes? It’s all very very bland.

Agreed but to be fair you couldn’t go brain-afk pre HoT at least in regards to season 1 content anyway. They did have a build or ramp up in difficulty and in group play that would’ve eased people into HoT more so than anything shown. The issue is it was all temporary from Aetherblades, Toxic Tower, Marionette, and the assault on LA version of LA you saw large scale open world maps that easily could bridge the gap into HoT. I left out season 1 because it’s no longer in the game but I person would have a much easier time soloing HoT maps then lets say trying to solo climb the toxic tower even if you removed all the toxic bosses.

Season 2 can still be bought and played and it’s a pretty good ramp up to HoT, particularly if you’re doing achievements.

Chun.5827:

-

If you don’t want to play with other people, why the kitten are you playing an MMO? If you want to clear all of the content in the game by yourself, play something different. Not everything can please everyone and clearly you don’t actually want an MMO.

If the ‘raids’ could be cleared by one person, how are they then any different from single-player story instances? What’s the kitten point then? So idiots who don’t belong in this genre can feel proud about themselves for having accomplished something so godkitten easy that they could do it by themselves?

Arguing that everything in an MMO should be soloable is like arguing that you should be able to use your hands in Soccer. This is seriously some of the main stuff that completely RUINED WoW.

Vayne.8563:

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

Vayne.8563:

Objectively you’re right. But I’m not sure how much that really helps the conversation.

There never has been a ‘conversation’ because people participating aren’t talking about the same thing. The original poster was really trying to say, “I don’t seem to like GW2 any longer.”

And he’s right…for him. No one can tell him the game hasn’t changed it’s identity because to him it has. But there is a conversation to be had, though it’s not really obvious.

The problem isn’t just that changes are made, but how changes are made to the game.

If you’ve been playing all along and you’ve done all the living stories and living story achievements the jump to HoT is actually not that bad.

But if you haven’t, and you just level to 80 don’t own LS 2 and you just jump into HoT the difficult from core to HoT is huge. It’s a total game changer.

There’s no warning to tell you not to do that. How many people do you think finish their story and then jump into hot that bought the game more recently?

That’s a big issue because people are used to games with breadcrumb trails that gradually increase difficulty.

Many of those people are going to feel like the game’s identity has changed from a more or less casual romp to a death trap.

I’m not sure what can be done about it, but something should be.

Sorry, no. The OP cannot say that the game has lost its identity, not even for the OP _unless the OP defines what they mean by “identity”. (By the way, they played with LS2; they quit after HoT.)

What they said they liked was that a new game was fresh. What they said they didn’t like was that a four-year old game wasn’t fresh in the ways that they liked. That’s not “identity” — that’s imposing a world view upon the game makers about what constitutes ‘fresh’.

They go on to claim a mandatory holy trinity that doesn’t exist (not in the way that term implies), they claim there’s a mastery ‘treadmill’ (not in the way that term implies).

In short, they don’t like the new things in GW2. Which is fine; they don’t have to. Everyone’s entitled to their own preferences. That doesn’t mean that they get to claim that the game has changed identity.

And of course there’s a conversation to be had — my point is that we are not having that conversation. Everyone keeps going round and round about what identity means, without agreeing on any of the key terms they are using to define it.

I don’t think anyone would argue that there’s room for improvement in the transition from Core to HoT, especially for new players. I don’t think anyone would argue that some mechanics and fights could be refreshed to be more fun for more people. But this thread isn’t about that — it’s about one person making an incredibly bold claim without any bold evidence to back it up, just opinion.

Can’t say it has lost its identity, but it has gone towards something I’m not too fond of and doesn’t really feel well within the game.

It’s really a tough question, since they have changed so much since the beginning, plus have had a lot of new ppl come in and some of theppl from the start have moved on or got new positions with the company. I feel in some ways it has and in others it hasnt, specially certain aspects of the games, since they wanted to make things more challenging. Like teq, shatterer and triple trouble. Changed for the better yes but….the scaling side of it for non full maps is horrible compares to where it was b4. Because to me that was part of the charm of world bosses, Any # of ppl could beat them, no need for a full map and that’s where iw ould like to see those 3 get rescaled for dead maps. That way it’s not be on a full map or you can’t do it. As for raids, not that i have done them, they have no interest for me as i do not want to play with 9 random ppl. For me where they lost the identity on them is the trinity. The game was created to have NONE, then they brought in raids to challenge players, which is good. But forcing someone to tank forcing someone to heal goes against what they set out at creation. I’d much rather see 10 of one class with any build do them, then have a trinity for them. And the difficulty as mentioned by someone above is the mechanics. Which is where it should come from, getting those mechanics down pat through practice

Is their new direction better then from the start? Sure, it’s still a great game and i think at it’s core will always be. So it may have lost some of it’s identity but it’s also gained some new ones, which as a whole still makes for a wonderful game and stil has a lot of room to improve on.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

Vayne.8563:

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

Vayne.8563:

Objectively you’re right. But I’m not sure how much that really helps the conversation.

There never has been a ‘conversation’ because people participating aren’t talking about the same thing. The original poster was really trying to say, “I don’t seem to like GW2 any longer.”

And he’s right…for him. No one can tell him the game hasn’t changed it’s identity because to him it has. But there is a conversation to be had, though it’s not really obvious.

The problem isn’t just that changes are made, but how changes are made to the game.

If you’ve been playing all along and you’ve done all the living stories and living story achievements the jump to HoT is actually not that bad.

But if you haven’t, and you just level to 80 don’t own LS 2 and you just jump into HoT the difficult from core to HoT is huge. It’s a total game changer.

There’s no warning to tell you not to do that. How many people do you think finish their story and then jump into hot that bought the game more recently?

That’s a big issue because people are used to games with breadcrumb trails that gradually increase difficulty.

Many of those people are going to feel like the game’s identity has changed from a more or less casual romp to a death trap.

I’m not sure what can be done about it, but something should be.

Sorry, no. The OP cannot say that the game has lost its identity, not even for the OP _unless the OP defines what they mean by “identity”. (By the way, they played with LS2; they quit after HoT.)

What they said they liked was that a new game was fresh. What they said they didn’t like was that a four-year old game wasn’t fresh in the ways that they liked. That’s not “identity” — that’s imposing a world view upon the game makers about what constitutes ‘fresh’.

They go on to claim a mandatory holy trinity that doesn’t exist (not in the way that term implies), they claim there’s a mastery ‘treadmill’ (not in the way that term implies).

In short, they don’t like the new things in GW2. Which is fine; they don’t have to. Everyone’s entitled to their own preferences. That doesn’t mean that they get to claim that the game has changed identity.

And of course there’s a conversation to be had — my point is that we are not having that conversation. Everyone keeps going round and round about what identity means, without agreeing on any of the key terms they are using to define it.

I don’t think anyone would argue that there’s room for improvement in the transition from Core to HoT, especially for new players. I don’t think anyone would argue that some mechanics and fights could be refreshed to be more fun for more people. But this thread isn’t about that — it’s about one person making an incredibly bold claim without any bold evidence to back it up, just opinion.

You’re obviously right about this…but who’s going to agree on what the identity of the game was in the first place.

There were people who came to this game and all the did was Fractals and dungeons and certainly they’d have a different sense of the game’s identity than I do. And those who only WvW or PvP, they’d have a completely different sense of the game’s identity than I do.

I used to think this game and the devs represented me, pretty solidly. I no longer think that’s true. But I’m not sure it’s ever been true. I’ve been misled by assumptions.

Now I have a broader view of what the game entails. But from my original standpoint, I’d have said the game had lost its identity too.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

And of course there’s a conversation to be had — my point is that we are not having that conversation. Everyone keeps going round and round about what identity means, without agreeing on any of the key terms they are using to define it.

This sort of thing happens frequently on these boards. Other examples of tangential discussion starting terms include “grind,” “casual” and “manifesto.”

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

I don’t think anyone would argue that there’s room for improvement in the transition from Core to HoT, especially for new players. I don’t think anyone would argue that some mechanics and fights could be refreshed to be more fun for more people. But this thread isn’t about that — it’s about one person making an incredibly bold claim without any bold evidence to back it up, just opinion.

And with the last part of this statement, you return to discussing your interpretation of what game “identity” means. No one, it seems, is immune, even those who can read between the lines.

Ayrilana.1396:

Scipio.3204:

Ayrilana.1396:

Scipio.3204:

Ayrilana.1396:

It did have at least as many rewards.

Sigh…. raids so far released the white mantle weapon set (16 piece) and the experimental envoy armor set (18 unique piece). Outside of these every boss has an average 2 unique item associated with it excluding trio and escort ( 2*11= 22 piece). That is 56 altogether +/- one or two.

LS episode one like I said released two unique piece. Rising flames gave us three, with an additional shoulder. The third one has 2 ,and like I said the last one has around 5. That is 12 altogether.

Even if we add the Clown weapon set , which has nothing to do with the new content outside of location, that is 28.

Calculating with this, the 4 raid wing has around twice as much reward compared to the 4 episodes released so far.

And you’re ignoring everything that the heart vendors sell. You’re ignoring the items you get from completing certain achievements. There’s the rewards from the recent current event. There’s also the backpacks, aquatic breathers, and home instance nodes.

I did not actually. Only two new heart vendors sell any kind of new equipment. I factored the few achievements that gives rewards like the Meta achievements. I did forget the new current event, fair enough, but as far as I can remember CE only gave us one headpiece and 7 new weapons, doesn’t really change the outcome.

I did not count in home instance nodes, accessories, tonics, miniatures and other similar items like the Portal Stone or infusions. The only thing that I did count are the ones Anet is known having problems in producing. E.g. things you actually wear. That includes Weapons, Armors and the back slot.

If you think I’m wrong you’re free to do your own list.

Rewards are not just weapon/armor skins. I’m not going to spend an hour making a list because it doesn’t matter one way or another.

For you maybe it doesn’t matter, but you know I’ve been playing a lot less on the new maps compared to how much I played on Dry Top and Silverwastes. But overall my playtime hasn’t decreased because I’ve made up the difference by playing raids instead.

However those who don’t play raids, they have a lot less reason to play the new content compared to when raids didn’t exist.

Ashen.2907:

Chun.5827:

Carighan.6758:

Chun.5827:

Its interesting how you equate a “challenge” with group content.

Considering the genre of the game we’re talking about (A Massive-Multiplayer Online RPG), I sure hope that the difficult content is group content. Otherwise, someone screwed up somewhere very early in the design process.

The whole point of these games is to play in a more social manner. Because let’s be frank (or bob, if you prefer), if not for the social aspect I could play a few dozen much better games. :P

Let me ask you this? Where does the root of Raid toxicity and conflict come from? It comes from the social aspect.

Some examples:
1. Spying and laying judgement on other group members, through the use of DPS meters
2. LFG requirements that have this formatt: LF X or kick. where X = LI, certain builds, etc.
3. Singling out a victim in a group to publicly humiliate and verbally abuse
4. Raiders vs Everyone else mentality. Segregation mentality, plenty of examples of this in human history.

Now what if raiding was solo challenging content?
1. Focuses exclusively on the “challenge” aspect
2. You can’t get carried or carry others. There wouldn’t be any raid buyers or doubts about the expertise of fellow party members.
3. No toxicity, there is no one to blame for any failures except yourself
4. Taking ownership and responsibility for your own learning and progression. No one dictates your schedule or how much effort you put in. Whether you want to use DPS meters or not. Everything is on you.
Take a look on Dark Souls 3 reddit or Bloodborne reddit. There’s a reason why toxicity is near non-existent.

GW2 social content in the past has always been low requirement and loosely organized to promote cooperation and happiness across as many people as possible. Raids changed this, and in terms of challenge, enforcing discipline and requirements is a social challenge not a technical one. A abrupt contrast from the rest of the PvE content in the game, the “spirit” of the game has changed.

Why should the truly challenging content be group enforced? The moment it becomes group enforced the social aspect acts as a barrier to people who only want the challenge aspect. Change truly challenging content to solo, and you remove all the toxicity around raids. The only people who could complain, are people who want the rewards but can’t beat the content.

Per your #3 solo content…

Are you aware that people have been toxic, cast blame, and complained about solo content since this game launched?

Almost all of the game is soloable. One small fraction is designed for people who want a cooperative, challenging, group experience…if you do not like that sort of experience, ignore this content.

Yes, people have been casting blame on easy solo content in this game, no challenging solo content exists FYI. So you can’t be talking about what I am talking about.

Where is all the loosely organized or solo challenging content in this game? Almost all of the game is easy solo content, fixed that statement for you. Are you talking about old outdated dungeons that I’ve run thousands of times already? Or fractals, with only two new fractals added? The rest of the fractals are as ancient as dungeons. I am out of line for wanting new challenging content that I am locked out of not because I don’t have the dedication, but because I don’t want to deal with 9 other people’s problems?

Yes, I am not happy because the only new challenging content in the game is locked behind 9 other people. I am missing out on 4 raid wings worth of content.

TL;DR There are people in this game who want challenging content, that is designed around 5 players or less. Either loosely organized challenging content that emphasizes personal skill, or solo content where personal skill is mandatory. Raids have accessibility issues outside of needing “dedication”.

Scipio.3204:

Ayrilana.1396:

Scipio.3204:

Ayrilana.1396:

Scipio.3204:

Ayrilana.1396:

It did have at least as many rewards.

Sigh…. raids so far released the white mantle weapon set (16 piece) and the experimental envoy armor set (18 unique piece). Outside of these every boss has an average 2 unique item associated with it excluding trio and escort ( 2*11= 22 piece). That is 56 altogether +/- one or two.

LS episode one like I said released two unique piece. Rising flames gave us three, with an additional shoulder. The third one has 2 ,and like I said the last one has around 5. That is 12 altogether.

Even if we add the Clown weapon set , which has nothing to do with the new content outside of location, that is 28.

Calculating with this, the 4 raid wing has around twice as much reward compared to the 4 episodes released so far.

And you’re ignoring everything that the heart vendors sell. You’re ignoring the items you get from completing certain achievements. There’s the rewards from the recent current event. There’s also the backpacks, aquatic breathers, and home instance nodes.

I did not actually. Only two new heart vendors sell any kind of new equipment. I factored the few achievements that gives rewards like the Meta achievements. I did forget the new current event, fair enough, but as far as I can remember CE only gave us one headpiece and 7 new weapons, doesn’t really change the outcome.

I did not count in home instance nodes, accessories, tonics, miniatures and other similar items like the Portal Stone or infusions. The only thing that I did count are the ones Anet is known having problems in producing. E.g. things you actually wear. That includes Weapons, Armors and the back slot.

If you think I’m wrong you’re free to do your own list.

Rewards are not just weapon/armor skins. I’m not going to spend an hour making a list because it doesn’t matter one way or another.

For you maybe it doesn’t matter, but you know I’ve been playing a lot less on the new maps compared to how much I played on Dry Top and Silverwastes. But overall my playtime hasn’t decreased because I’ve made up the difference by playing raids instead.

However those who don’t play raids, they have a lot less reason to play the new content compared to when raids didn’t exist.

It doesn’t matter because the resources spent on rewards pales considerably to the resources spent on actual content. This is why trying to compare quantities of rewards between raids and elsewhere in the game is pointless.

SW and DT have grindy achievements and collections which kept players coming to those maps. You also earn those currencies at a much slower rate compared to all other maps with map currencies. The time spent in those maps to accomplish goals takes longer than it would in other maps with comparable goals.

And this:

However those who don’t play raids, they have a lot less reason to play the new content compared to when raids didn’t exist.

makes absolutely no sense. The same reasons to play a map were going to exist whether or not raids existed. Raids have little impact on whether someone finds any of the LS maps desirable to play on.

Ayrilana.1396:

It doesn’t matter because the resources spent on rewards pales considerably to the resources spent on actual content. This is why trying to compare quantities of rewards between raids and elsewhere in the game is pointless.

How do you know? Anet explicitly said making an armor set takes around 9 month, much longer for a legendary. And we have no idea how long it takes to make a weapon set. And again, maybe pointless for you, because the accessibility of said rewards didn’t change for you.

SW and DT have grindy achievements and collections which kept players coming to those maps. You also earn those currencies at a much slower rate compared to all other maps with map currencies. The time spent in those maps to accomplish goals takes longer than it would in other maps with comparable goals.

And the new maps have close to nothing to grind for. Exactly my point.

makes absolutely no sense. The same reasons to play a map were going to exist whether or not raids existed. Raids have little impact on whether someone finds any of the LS maps desirable to play on.

Reason a.k.a. rewards? Do you think the same amount of people were raiding if it had no uniques? The same can be said for the new maps. I can’t even count it how many of my friends stopped caring about the new maps , because they asked “What can you earn?” and the answer was 1 armor piece and a backpack.

Chun.5827:

Ashen.2907:

Chun.5827:

Carighan.6758:

Chun.5827:

Its interesting how you equate a “challenge” with group content.

Considering the genre of the game we’re talking about (A Massive-Multiplayer Online RPG), I sure hope that the difficult content is group content. Otherwise, someone screwed up somewhere very early in the design process.

The whole point of these games is to play in a more social manner. Because let’s be frank (or bob, if you prefer), if not for the social aspect I could play a few dozen much better games. :P

Let me ask you this? Where does the root of Raid toxicity and conflict come from? It comes from the social aspect.

Some examples:
1. Spying and laying judgement on other group members, through the use of DPS meters
2. LFG requirements that have this formatt: LF X or kick. where X = LI, certain builds, etc.
3. Singling out a victim in a group to publicly humiliate and verbally abuse
4. Raiders vs Everyone else mentality. Segregation mentality, plenty of examples of this in human history.

Now what if raiding was solo challenging content?
1. Focuses exclusively on the “challenge” aspect
2. You can’t get carried or carry others. There wouldn’t be any raid buyers or doubts about the expertise of fellow party members.
3. No toxicity, there is no one to blame for any failures except yourself
4. Taking ownership and responsibility for your own learning and progression. No one dictates your schedule or how much effort you put in. Whether you want to use DPS meters or not. Everything is on you.
Take a look on Dark Souls 3 reddit or Bloodborne reddit. There’s a reason why toxicity is near non-existent.

GW2 social content in the past has always been low requirement and loosely organized to promote cooperation and happiness across as many people as possible. Raids changed this, and in terms of challenge, enforcing discipline and requirements is a social challenge not a technical one. A abrupt contrast from the rest of the PvE content in the game, the “spirit” of the game has changed.

Why should the truly challenging content be group enforced? The moment it becomes group enforced the social aspect acts as a barrier to people who only want the challenge aspect. Change truly challenging content to solo, and you remove all the toxicity around raids. The only people who could complain, are people who want the rewards but can’t beat the content.

Per your #3 solo content…

Are you aware that people have been toxic, cast blame, and complained about solo content since this game launched?

Almost all of the game is soloable. One small fraction is designed for people who want a cooperative, challenging, group experience…if you do not like that sort of experience, ignore this content.

Yes, people have been casting blame on easy solo content in this game, no challenging solo content exists FYI. So you can’t be talking about what I am talking about.

Where is all the loosely organized or solo challenging content in this game? Almost all of the game is easy solo content, fixed that statement for you. Are you talking about old outdated dungeons that I’ve run thousands of times already? Or fractals, with only two new fractals added? The rest of the fractals are as ancient as dungeons. I am out of line for wanting new challenging content that I am locked out of not because I don’t have the dedication, but because I don’t want to deal with 9 other people’s problems?

Yes, I am not happy because the only new challenging content in the game is locked behind 9 other people. I am missing out on 4 raid wings worth of content.

TL;DR There are people in this game who want challenging content, that is designed around 5 players or less. Either loosely organized challenging content that emphasizes personal skill, or solo content where personal skill is mandatory. Raids have accessibility issues outside of needing “dedication”.

There is, has always been, and will continue to be toxicity and complaints around solo content. Claims that there is or will be no toxicity or blame casting in the case of the development of solo content is a fantasy completely divorced from even a semblance of reality.

Fractals is this game’s 5 man content. Its been around for some time. Gets periodic updates. Now ANet is developing content for other people too.

Vayne.8563:

OniGiri.9461:

Vayne.8563:

@OniGirl

You’re missing my point here. The game hasn’t shifted identity to you because this is how you perceive the game’s identity. But the game doesn’t have an identity with a capitol “I”. You saw the game a certain way and it remains that way to you.

More and more people who are casual are seeing the game they saw slip away. Not just raids. Maybe not even mainly raids. I used the winter’s presence shoulder as an example. That is beyond many casual players. They see the people getting it and realize they can’t. Not in one year. Maybe not in two. They see the bat shoulders from halloween. They see timed events in HoT that are on a schedule. for which they have to use LFG to get on a map that can beat it. Those are all changes.

For you the game has changed in a way that hasn’t affected how you perceived it’s identity. For me, that’s mostly true as well.

But just as true, there are people who have stopped playing because the game’s identity has changed for them.

The bigger the shift the more people will be affected. HoT is my favorite content in the game, but I do believe the shift in focus affected a lot of people. To those people, the game has lost it’s identity even if it hasn’t from our point of view.

And there are even people who left when ascended were first introduced who thought the game had lost it’s identity even then.

The problem wasn’t just HoT. It was HoT followed by 9 months of only raids and PvP in a content drought that probably cost the game players. I don’t suspect that will happen again. I don’t think it should have happened in the first place, but hindsight is 20/20.

I’m guilty here of hyperbole, which I’ve often accused people of because I’ve seen casual people walk away from this game in my guild. It’s just getting too much for some of them. Too hard, or too much grind or too much “work”. So yeah, I went over the deep end in some of what I was saying. I don’t like seeing guildies I’ve played with for years walk away because they don’t feel they have time to play the game the way the game requires you to play it now.

They feel left behind and who am I to say they’re wrong?

Well you can’t do a lot about the way people feel. Change is necessary to keep things alive and also to keep people interested.
I started gw2 with two (irl) friend of mine and we created a guild and played as we liked. One friend was always super active, always the first to find something new and to try every game mode and more or less master it. The other friend was the other extreme. Super casual and layed back. To this day never heard about “meta”, rotations, builds or any of that stuff. Me and my more active friend got to a point where we had maxed our gear and levels and had a pretty good knowledge of the game and how to do stuff. And more important we knew where to get information on how to learn stuff thats new.
My casual friend stopped playing because it was too much “work” to keep up. And we are talking about vanilla gw2!!

The game has to keep moving forward and some will drop out but new ones will come in. And just because someone stopped doesnt mean they won’t return at some point.

Of course you can change the way people feel. More than that, to some degree you have to change the way people feel. A lot of the issues Anet has is presentation.

There are many changes they make that aren’t well explained or aren’t explained at all, and they leave people feeling angry, confused or puzzled. This isn’t the best way, in my opinion, to run the game.

If you tell people up front, HoT is meant to be challenging end game content, and that Living Story Season 2 is meant to prepare you for that, or where to go to get better before you venture into HOT, you end up with a different situation than we have now, which is people finishing the core game and jumping right into hot and getting slaughtered, because they don’t know any better.

They ramped up the difficulty too fast for people who don’t run dungeons and fractals, so they shouldn’t be surprised they’ve left some of those people behind.

Unfortunately casuals do spend lots of money in the gem store, because they’re used to doing so from facebook games. lol

Was it though? Was HoT really that much harder than running around in Orr?
I think the missconception comes from always zerg-ing up – in that case all of vanilla gw2 feels super easy.

I’m not sure it makes sense discussing this any longer since you don’t seem to feel like the identity of the game got lost on the way.
I am not sure what kind of gamers these guildies of yours were that left because of HoT or Raids or challanging content but it doesnt seem like they were really dedicated to this game and were bound to fall off eventually.

@OniGiri.9461

This makes no sense at all. Those guildies that are dissatisfied now, were satisfied before the expansion (and many of them are still satisified. But yes, HoT is massively different from Orr before the patch for a lot of reasons.

There was nothing in Orr like pocket raptors. The big problem with Orr before the initial nerfs were pulls and stuns. Maybe some conditions.

There were no creatures in Orr that stealthed. There were no normal mobs in Orr that could one shot you. There were no areas of Orr that I can remember where you had something like two frogs, one who was harder to melee and one who was harder to range. Orr was annoying but I don’t ever remember dying there.

There was nothing like a smoke scale. There weren’t groups of enemies, that included guys that tormented you, because torment didn’t exist. There were no break bars to think about. The maps were much simpler as well.

You may not have seen a big difference in the jungle and Orr but that doesn’t mean that difference doesn’t exist….because it’s huge. And Orr got nerfed for complaints and since the nerf it’s certainly much easier.

Beyond that, let’s pretend someone liked the game the way it was, and bought something for $50 that was different from what it was. Those people spent $50 on something they don’t enjoy playing. That is to say they put the same amount of money into the game as you did, but got a product that they considered significantly different from the product they were enjoying.

Do you really think those people are interested in buying gems and throwing more money at this game? Do you not see that monthly income is down? Because I’m sure Anet sees it.

It’s up to Anet to decide the cause of that, but I don’t think adding raids made them a ton of money, or driving away their most casual players. Not to say all casual players feel this way but there’s obviously an issue,. because people are talking about an issue.

Your response is basically I didn’t find it hard, so it’s not hard. I’m not sure how helpful that response is.

Scipio.3204:

Ayrilana.1396:

It doesn’t matter because the resources spent on rewards pales considerably to the resources spent on actual content. This is why trying to compare quantities of rewards between raids and elsewhere in the game is pointless.

How do you know? Anet explicitly said making an armor set takes around 9 month, much longer for a legendary. And we have no idea how long it takes to make a weapon set. And again, maybe pointless for you, because the accessibility of said rewards didn’t change for you.

So you’re saying that creating weapon skins takes up as much, if not more, resources that developing the entirety of a living story episode? I don’t recall them giving out that timeline for armor and you’re also not taking into consideration of how many staff were a part of it.

For example two staff members working on weapons for nine months is not the same as four staff working on the LS for six months. I don’t know the number of staff that work on a single weapon set but I’m pretty sure it’s considerably less than what they have working on the LS.

Also realize that whether or not raids is accessible has nothing to do with me saying comparing rewards across two areas of the games didn’t matter. I even explained why.

Scipio.3204:

Ayrilana.1396:

SW and DT have grindy achievements and collections which kept players coming to those maps. You also earn those currencies at a much slower rate compared to all other maps with map currencies. The time spent in those maps to accomplish goals takes longer than it would in other maps with comparable goals.

And the new maps have close to nothing to grind for. Exactly my point.

Then ask for some grindy achievements or collections?

Scipio.3204:

Ayrilana.1396:

makes absolutely no sense. The same reasons to play a map were going to exist whether or not raids existed. Raids have little impact on whether someone finds any of the LS maps desirable to play on.

Reason a.k.a. rewards? Do you think the same amount of people were raiding if it had no uniques? The same can be said for the new maps. I can’t even count it how many of my friends stopped caring about the new maps , because they asked “What can you earn?” and the answer was 1 armor piece and a backpack.

You’re so focused on rewards which have nothing to do with the resources being spent on content such as the LS and raids.

Ayrilana.1396:

So you’re saying that creating weapon skins takes up as much, if not more, resources that developing the entirety of a living story episode? I don’t recall them giving out that timeline for armor and you’re also not taking into consideration of how many staff were a part of it.

For example two staff members working on weapons for nine months is not the same as four staff working on the LS for six months. I don’t know the number of staff that work on a single weapon set but I’m pretty sure it’s considerably less than what they have working on the LS.

Also realize that whether or not raids is accessible has nothing to do with me saying comparing rewards across two areas of the games didn’t matter. I even explained why.

There you go, https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/4urm84/out_of_the_shadows_developer_ama_summary/

You can find it in the Misc, section. Funnily enough, it took them only 5 month to create a fractal, compared to the 9 month of one armor set.

I didn’t count in the amount of staff members, because I can’t count with something I have no information about, and you shouldn’t either. What actually matters is, how much of their resources raids are taking, and we are back to square one.

Then ask for some grindy achievements or collections?

I could, but remember what you had to collect in Dry Top and SW for those collections & achievements?

Ayrilana.1396:

You’re so focused on rewards which have nothing to do with the resources being spent on content such as the LS and raids.

But don’t tell me rewards don’t affect the replayability of said content, no matter which one we are talking about. I’m focused on rewards because that is the topic at hand, but oh, believe me, the current system bleeds from several wounds, not just one.

Anyway, I think we reached the point when we are replying for just the sake of replying, so I’ll stop here. If you choose to believe the existence of raids doesn’t affect the rest of the game or the non-raider playerbase, you are free to do so.

Time to make isn’t a valid comparison, dev hours are. It’s unlikely the same number and types of devs are involved in making an armor set Vs a fractal.

The issue with armor skins is testing them with the other existing sets, not really an issue with weapon sets.

Scipio.3204:

Ayrilana.1396:

So you’re saying that creating weapon skins takes up as much, if not more, resources that developing the entirety of a living story episode? I don’t recall them giving out that timeline for armor and you’re also not taking into consideration of how many staff were a part of it.

For example two staff members working on weapons for nine months is not the same as four staff working on the LS for six months. I don’t know the number of staff that work on a single weapon set but I’m pretty sure it’s considerably less than what they have working on the LS.

Also realize that whether or not raids is accessible has nothing to do with me saying comparing rewards across two areas of the games didn’t matter. I even explained why.

There you go, https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/4urm84/out_of_the_shadows_developer_ama_summary/

You can find it in the Misc, section. Funnily enough, it took them only 5 month to create a fractal, compared to the 9 month of one armor set.

I didn’t count in the amount of staff members, because I can’t count with something I have no information about, and you shouldn’t either. What actually matters is, how much of their resources raids are taking, and we are back to square one.

Thanks for the link.

They had more staff working on the fractal. Also keep in mind that the only armor set(s) they released post expansion were for raids and these were being worked on prior to launch. They were even announced well before launch.

And rewards is not the way to measure or estimate that.

Scipio.3204:

Ayrilana.1396:

Then ask for some grindy achievements or collections?

I could, but remember what you had to collect in Dry Top and SW for those collections & achievements?

Yes. What are you trying to get at?

Scipio.3204:

Ayrilana.1396:

You’re so focused on rewards which have nothing to do with the resources being spent on content such as the LS and raids.

But don’t tell me rewards don’t affect the replayability of said content, no matter which one we are talking about. I’m focused on rewards because that is the topic at hand, but oh, believe me, the current system bleeds from several wounds, not just one.

Anyway, I think we reached the point when we are replying for just the sake of replying, so I’ll stop here. If you choose to believe the existence of raids doesn’t affect the rest of the game or the non-raider playerbase, you are free to do so.

Rewards only affect replayability for as long as it takes for players to earn them and for the rewards that they actually care about. The replayability of LS maps is mainly from farming the map currencies to get ascended trinkets as they’re a quick way to earn them.

Vayne.8563:

Do you really think those people are interested in buying gems and throwing more money at this game? Do you not see that monthly income is down? Because I’m sure Anet sees it.

To clarify a few things. Gem sales are stable, it has been confirmed by NCsoft. You can also check on online retailers that show stats of their product sales to confirm that gem sales are stable for Guild Wars 2. There is no reason not to believe official facts.

This must mean that the amount of players who stopped paying gems because they didn’t like the expansion is countered by the amount of either new players joining (and paying) or older players paying more gems. So for the company it’s not a bad situation.

The monthly revenue of Guild Wars 2 is lower because of the lack of sales, something that was also confirmed by NCsoft financial reports. Players who did not buy the expansion AT ALL, that’s where the problem is. Back before the announcement of Heart of Thorns, the core game (Guild Wars 2 Heroic edition) was selling more than Heart of Thorns does now, and by more I mean a LOT more.

Gem sales are fine and stable. The loss of revenue is because not enough players are converting to the expansion. Since we can all agree that the majority of the population doesn’t read forums or reviews, that’s not the result of an identity loss.
Maybe it’s the result of the core game not being fun enough to force a conversion. If a free 2 play player gets bored by the easy mode of the game, they won’t stay long enough to buy an expansion.
Maybe it’s all those who weren’t satisfied with the expansion that are spreading their negativity on others, hurting the game in the process by sending away potential customers. Players that would’ve bought (and maybe even liked) the game if it weren’t for the negativity.

Vayne.8563:

@OniGiri.9461

This makes no sense at all. Those guildies that are dissatisfied now, were satisfied before the expansion (and many of them are still satisified. But yes, HoT is massively different from Orr before the patch for a lot of reasons.

There was nothing in Orr like pocket raptors. The big problem with Orr before the initial nerfs were pulls and stuns. Maybe some conditions.

There were no creatures in Orr that stealthed. There were no normal mobs in Orr that could one shot you. There were no areas of Orr that I can remember where you had something like two frogs, one who was harder to melee and one who was harder to range. Orr was annoying but I don’t ever remember dying there.

There was nothing like a smoke scale. There weren’t groups of enemies, that included guys that tormented you, because torment didn’t exist. There were no break bars to think about. The maps were much simpler as well.

You may not have seen a big difference in the jungle and Orr but that doesn’t mean that difference doesn’t exist….because it’s huge. And Orr got nerfed for complaints and since the nerf it’s certainly much easier.

Beyond that, let’s pretend someone liked the game the way it was, and bought something for $50 that was different from what it was. Those people spent $50 on something they don’t enjoy playing. That is to say they put the same amount of money into the game as you did, but got a product that they considered significantly different from the product they were enjoying.

Do you really think those people are interested in buying gems and throwing more money at this game? Do you not see that monthly income is down? Because I’m sure Anet sees it.

It’s up to Anet to decide the cause of that, but I don’t think adding raids made them a ton of money, or driving away their most casual players. Not to say all casual players feel this way but there’s obviously an issue,. because people are talking about an issue.

Your response is basically I didn’t find it hard, so it’s not hard. I’m not sure how helpful that response is.

I didn’t say the new HoT maps weren’t hard. But i don’t think they were so much harderer then the old level 80 maps that its reasonable to cause a dropping off of “casual” players.

Dont panic about the numbers – you are reading too much into it.
The numbers were in a very similar state before they announced the expansion.

OnizukaBR.8537:

Healix.5819:

OnizukaBR.8537:

You never say that this easy mode raids are what you want, you say that it what everyone wants.

An easy mode raid should be what everyone wants, except for those not wanting raids period.

Do you like raids? You should want to see an easy mode as it’ll greatly increase the participation and thus justify further development. There probably would have been a lot more dungeons today if they scaled for 1+.

See WoW. Raiding was originally less than 1% back in the hardcore days prior to WotLK. With LFR, raiding is now completed by the majority, where normal raiding is around 20% and hard mode progression raiding a fraction of that. The simple truth is, most people play for fun, solo and don’t want to waste their time. LFR is just that, where you simply queue up and win. If GW2 offered that, where you could earn the same rewards and just take 10x longer to earn them, it’d certainly be far more popular. To differentiate, actual raids could simply offer different cosmetics, like how SAB TM has colored weapons.

Stop bringing WoW LFR argument. WoW is a Raid Centric game. GW2 is nto a Raid Centric game.

Raids and easy are two oposite things. If you want easy things you look for other things, anyone who like raids dont like easy mode.

And you can see how implementing it is a really bad move just look at wing 4. They introduced two of the easiest bosses you could have. And still the easy mode crowed dont like / dont do it, and almost all the raiders dont like how boring the two first bosses are.
See trying to please everybody ending pleasing nobody. Its a universal truth, people like different things.

So let me rephrase that for you:
“An easy mode raid should be what no one wants, except for those not wanting to raid in the first place period.”

Yes and thats why people want easy mode 100% they dont want to stop after 50% and the raiders want harder 100% they dont want the boring first two bosses so easy mode/ your normal ,our hard mode is what everyone wants.
How can you not see it yet?

Linken.6345:

Yes and thats why people want easy mode 100% they dont want to stop after 50% and the raiders want harder 100% they dont want the boring first two bosses so easy mode/ your normal ,our hard mode is what everyone wants.
How can you not see it yet?

They see it, but they don’t want their slice of game to become more popular. And they just assume that casuals will just keep shelling out cash for them to have fun. Out of charity probably, because there’s no other reason for that.

Astralporing.1957:

Linken.6345:

Yes and thats why people want easy mode 100% they dont want to stop after 50% and the raiders want harder 100% they dont want the boring first two bosses so easy mode/ your normal ,our hard mode is what everyone wants.
How can you not see it yet?

They see it, but they don’t want their slice of game to become more popular. And they just assume that casuals will just keep shelling out cash for them to have fun. Out of charity probably, because there’s no other reason for that.

Man you seem so salty and toxic. Chill out. They are popular enough because Anet staff is happy with the number of people raiding in the game. And that is what makes them popular, the fact that players can do content that require more than just following a Zerg in open world or other five man content that most have already mastered for a very long time. Besides, you don’t generate interest just by creating a toned down version of everything that is being deemed hard by players, what you do when toning down content is divide the playerbase even more. And when you do so, you make it harder for Anet to create content because they need to update and sustain the content for every subset of players, which then will diverte even more ressources to raids, a very optional content that isn’t required to be completed by all. Another point I would like to point out is that the playerbase is not black and white. You can’t assume that every casual in the game hates raids and all spend huge amount of money in the gemstore. In the same way, not all players that are casual will always be casual.

OniGiri.9461:

Vayne.8563:

@OniGiri.9461

This makes no sense at all. Those guildies that are dissatisfied now, were satisfied before the expansion (and many of them are still satisified. But yes, HoT is massively different from Orr before the patch for a lot of reasons.

There was nothing in Orr like pocket raptors. The big problem with Orr before the initial nerfs were pulls and stuns. Maybe some conditions.

There were no creatures in Orr that stealthed. There were no normal mobs in Orr that could one shot you. There were no areas of Orr that I can remember where you had something like two frogs, one who was harder to melee and one who was harder to range. Orr was annoying but I don’t ever remember dying there.

There was nothing like a smoke scale. There weren’t groups of enemies, that included guys that tormented you, because torment didn’t exist. There were no break bars to think about. The maps were much simpler as well.

You may not have seen a big difference in the jungle and Orr but that doesn’t mean that difference doesn’t exist….because it’s huge. And Orr got nerfed for complaints and since the nerf it’s certainly much easier.

Beyond that, let’s pretend someone liked the game the way it was, and bought something for $50 that was different from what it was. Those people spent $50 on something they don’t enjoy playing. That is to say they put the same amount of money into the game as you did, but got a product that they considered significantly different from the product they were enjoying.

Do you really think those people are interested in buying gems and throwing more money at this game? Do you not see that monthly income is down? Because I’m sure Anet sees it.

It’s up to Anet to decide the cause of that, but I don’t think adding raids made them a ton of money, or driving away their most casual players. Not to say all casual players feel this way but there’s obviously an issue,. because people are talking about an issue.

Your response is basically I didn’t find it hard, so it’s not hard. I’m not sure how helpful that response is.

I didn’t say the new HoT maps weren’t hard. But i don’t think they were so much harderer then the old level 80 maps that its reasonable to cause a dropping off of “casual” players.

Dont panic about the numbers – you are reading too much into it.
The numbers were in a very similar state before they announced the expansion.

Actually they’re not. They’re about half that level. That is to say the last three quarters have been the lowest this game has ever earned. That situation hasn’t existed until now. I’m not really concerned about the numbers, because now that the game has moved to an expansion model, that will be the norm. Drops between expansions and more money during the expansion.

But I do hope the next expansion is better received than HoT was.

Throwing my two cents in here, I have to agree with OP here. I have been playing Guildwars since factions came out. I liked how the world was instanced at first, made me feel like I was actually doing quests and stuff was happening in my world. Parties and community mattered, then heroes came along and everyone abandoned everyone for preference of controlling AI with OP builds. The community died, and became a grind fest.

Now I loved the core GW2, HoT fell short for me and I have never done a raid but am interested, however. With the updates that are being thrown in and pushing endgame further and further into a grind I can no longer keep up or even keep and interest in the game anymore. LS3 is just one big grind now, I hate it, it’s annoying and boring killing the same mobs over and over, there is no substance and no actual questing being done like in the beginning. GW2 is becoming just another kittenty MMO imho, I barely even log on to make the daily log on rewards now, when I was so excited for LS3.
Dungeons which were one of my favourite things to do are pretty much on life support and the way raids are headed, I will never be able to learn / keep up unless I dedicate all my time to it just to try it, that is if I can find anyone willing to take me on as a super casual student.

I agree with OP here, GW2 has lost its identity as a game that’s different, which is sad because it came out with so much potential.

Vayne.8563:

OniGiri.9461:

Vayne.8563:

@OniGiri.9461

This makes no sense at all. Those guildies that are dissatisfied now, were satisfied before the expansion (and many of them are still satisified. But yes, HoT is massively different from Orr before the patch for a lot of reasons.

There was nothing in Orr like pocket raptors. The big problem with Orr before the initial nerfs were pulls and stuns. Maybe some conditions.

There were no creatures in Orr that stealthed. There were no normal mobs in Orr that could one shot you. There were no areas of Orr that I can remember where you had something like two frogs, one who was harder to melee and one who was harder to range. Orr was annoying but I don’t ever remember dying there.

There was nothing like a smoke scale. There weren’t groups of enemies, that included guys that tormented you, because torment didn’t exist. There were no break bars to think about. The maps were much simpler as well.

You may not have seen a big difference in the jungle and Orr but that doesn’t mean that difference doesn’t exist….because it’s huge. And Orr got nerfed for complaints and since the nerf it’s certainly much easier.

Beyond that, let’s pretend someone liked the game the way it was, and bought something for $50 that was different from what it was. Those people spent $50 on something they don’t enjoy playing. That is to say they put the same amount of money into the game as you did, but got a product that they considered significantly different from the product they were enjoying.

Do you really think those people are interested in buying gems and throwing more money at this game? Do you not see that monthly income is down? Because I’m sure Anet sees it.

It’s up to Anet to decide the cause of that, but I don’t think adding raids made them a ton of money, or driving away their most casual players. Not to say all casual players feel this way but there’s obviously an issue,. because people are talking about an issue.

Your response is basically I didn’t find it hard, so it’s not hard. I’m not sure how helpful that response is.

I didn’t say the new HoT maps weren’t hard. But i don’t think they were so much harderer then the old level 80 maps that its reasonable to cause a dropping off of “casual” players.

Dont panic about the numbers – you are reading too much into it.
The numbers were in a very similar state before they announced the expansion.

Actually they’re not. They’re about half that level. That is to say the last three quarters have been the lowest this game has ever earned. That situation hasn’t existed until now. I’m not really concerned about the numbers, because now that the game has moved to an expansion model, that will be the norm. Drops between expansions and more money during the expansion.

But I do hope the next expansion is better received than HoT was.

Average income in the last 3 quarters are roughly 25-30% per quarter lower from the average income in the 6 quarters before HoT. There is a two quarter bump in between where HoT account sales also reside.

Legendary Grenth.3561:

Throwing my two cents in here, I have to agree with OP here. I have been playing Guildwars since factions came out. I liked how the world was instanced at first, made me feel like I was actually doing quests and stuff was happening in my world. Parties and community mattered, then heroes came along and everyone abandoned everyone for preference of controlling AI with OP builds. The community died, and became a grind fest.

Now I loved the core GW2, HoT fell short for me and I have never done a raid but am interested, however. With the updates that are being thrown in and pushing endgame further and further into a grind I can no longer keep up or even keep and interest in the game anymore. LS3 is just one big grind now, I hate it, it’s annoying and boring killing the same mobs over and over, there is no substance and no actual questing being done like in the beginning. GW2 is becoming just another kittenty MMO imho, I barely even log on to make the daily log on rewards now, when I was so excited for LS3.
Dungeons which were one of my favourite things to do are pretty much on life support and the way raids are headed, I will never be able to learn / keep up unless I dedicate all my time to it just to try it, that is if I can find anyone willing to take me on as a super casual student.

I agree with OP here, GW2 has lost its identity as a game that’s different, which is sad because it came out with so much potential.

Help me out here. What is “real questing?” When I visit core maps I see the same events and the same enemies every time, just like in the LS3 maps. What’s the difference?

As for grinding, it seems to me that LS3 offers map currency which players may use to purchase useful rewards while core Tyria offers no such rewards. I can see how one might feel compelled to “grind” for these rewards, but having no rewards doesn’t seem like any kind of solution to that problem.

Since LWS2, ANet tied unique items from NPCs on that map to the map’s unique currency as a way to enforce participation on that map. That then provides a reason to stay on/return to the map once the story there is finished and it keeps the population up on that map, at least for a while. This design philosophy was also carried over to the HoT and LWS3 maps.

Yes it’s different from core Tyria where gold and karma is the currency of choice and doesn’t matter where it’s farmed. It’s just different, no better or worse.